With the explosion of digital technology, more and more digital assets are being created. Digital assets can include, for instance, images, sound files, documents, logos, or anything else that can be stored digitally. As the number of digital assets grows in a company, it becomes harder to effectively manage these assets. Typically, digital assets are presently just stored on a file server somewhere and the only way to identify the asset is by the filename under which the asset is stored. Filenames however can also be very cryptic. The only way to perform a search of digital assets is by searching the filenames, which may not be very helpful if the filenames are not very descriptive. Furthermore, once you find a file that may or may not contain the digital assets that you are looking for, the file must be opened so that asset can be viewed. This can be a very slow, time-consuming process. Thus, there is a need for asset management system that efficiently and effectively organizes digital assets.
Another challenge with using digital assets is the need to interrupt ones work in one application to search for and retrieve a digital asset to be used in the first application. For example, if a user is writing an article and wants to insert a picture into the article, typically the user must leave the application that is being used to write the article and use at least one other application to find and retrieve the desired picture. This approach does not seem very integrated to the user. Thus, there is a need for a way to create an extension of a plurality of programs for an asset management system so as to provide the user with a more integrated feel.